Ever since it came out in May 1977 this has been my favourite single.

If you distil pop music down to two things – the primal thrill and the emotional resonance – then it’s got both in abundance.

First there’s the visceral surge of Steve Jones’s opening guitar riff. Then the physical punch to the gut when Paul Cook’s drums and Glen Matlock’s bass come in (Sid’s just there for show – he doesn’t play).

And finally the antisocial shock (and you cannot overestimate how strong it was at the time) of that whiney anti-singing vocal – like no one before – and the sneering sarcasm of those lyrics.

It’s hard to imagine now – hard even to remember – but people were actually offended by this. Properly offended. Words were exchanged. Punches were thrown. Rotten was slashed with a knife outside a pub (The Pegasus) yards from where I would end up living – and next to my favourite Turkish kebab emporium.

Just for singing a pop song that rhymed “God Save the Queen” with “the fascist regime.”

Punk was divisive in a way that simply doesn’t exist any more. Strangers would shout abuse and middle-aged Teddy boys would attack us in the street. I fell out with a couple of old school mates just because they thought this “wasn’t real music” – that the band “couldn’t play” and the singer “couldn’t sing.”

They might have had a point, but they were missing the bigger one.

God Save The Queen came out in May 1977 and, depending on who you believe, it either did or didn’t top the UK singles chart during the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations the following month. Officially it was No.2 behind some turgid ballad by Rod Stewart but many think that was a fix.

The Pistols single came out on Virgin Records who signed the band after they were sacked by their previous labels A&M and EMI, leaving just a small handful of the original A&M single in circulation.

You can imagine how annoying it is for me that I actually had one in my hand for about ten seconds when I was hanging about at Malcolm McLaren’s office in Oxford Street, as I occasionally did, and he gave me one…

Only for Johnny Rotten, sitting at the back of the room, to tell him that he hadn’t been given a copy yet, so Malcolm asked for it back, and gave it to him instead. “Don’t worry,” he said by way of apology, “I’ll get you another one.”

A day later the band were sacked (again), the record was withdrawn – prior to release – and nearly all copies were destroyed, making the few remaining ones a collector’s item. The last one was sold at auction for £13,000.